CONCORD, Calif. — At a tearful tribe meeting in May, Yvonne Grable was voted out of her small group.

“My alliances broke down, I got betrayed,” she says with a bitter edge. “That’s church as usual, right?”

Instead of hanging around to serve on the “jury,” Grable quit the church altogether.

“How can you worship beside someone who voted against you?” she says.

Small Group Survivor, dreamed up by Bethel Church pastor Dave Salisbury, was intended as a novel gimmick to attract new members, and to show the damage done by gossip and backbiting.

“It was meant to be a team-building exercise that showed people the benefits of peacemaking and the damage of division,” Salisbury says.

But Small Group Survivor: Bethel Church backfired, splitting the church into dozens of factions and secretive alliances.

Nobody was actually booted from their group, but rather was “exiled” to sit quietly through small group meetings until the jury decided between two final candidates. Challenges included Bible memorization and trivia. Winners received a $150 gift certificate to the Bible bookstore and title of Bethel Church Small Group Survivor.

As competition grew more pitched than expected, patterns emerged. The first people to go were usually Bible know-it-alls and talkative emotional women with lots of problems. Next were people with insufferable children.

Eventually, any semblance of good-will broke down.

“I thought it would be a fun object lesson, but it didn’t turn out that way,” says Salisbury, who is calling all participants to apologize. “Next time we’ll try something positive, like Extreme Makeover: Women’s Ministry Edition.” •